Bali, serene Bali

If there is one thing that can must be pointed of Bali, it is its serenity. The feeling of peace and calmness that one experiences on the island matches the most laid-back areas of Goa. Time seems to run at a slower pace. The beauty, the tradition and the calm demeanor of people around makes one slow down and take a breather.

We landed in Bali after a hectic and tiring series of days. The flight from Chennai was rather uneventful, except for a sleepy break at the KL Airport where we struggled to find vegetarian food and had to finally settle for pizza and popcorns. The Ngurah Rai International Airport at Denpasar, Bali seemed a bit dated, and under renovation (mildly reminiscent of the Ninoy Aquino Airport at Manila, in the same brick mold). While the queues were long, the airport staff seemed efficient and quickly passed us through. 

The cab-driver seemed glad to see us, saying that Bali was the last Hindu area in Indonesia and it was great to find Indians with whom they had a shared culture. Enroute to the hotel was also a massive statue depicting the war scene between Ghatotkacha and Karna during the Mahabharatha, bigger than we had seen anywhere in India.

Bali Mahabharatha scene (source: Vivek Pandit)

Nusa Dua was our first port of call. Nusa Dua is a clustered set of resorts in the southern end of Bali which usually holds conventions and conference. The area may seem a bit plasticky to those seeking culture, but we were glad to check into a comfortable bed after a strenuous trip. 

The Nusa Dua hotel and convention center (yes, named after the area), is a beautifully decorated, yet slightly dated hotel in the center of Nusa Dua. The rooms are large and beautiful, and look onto beautiful gardens and pools that face the sea. The weather was a bit balmy and reminded us of Goa. The hotel has a beautiful white sandy beach, with waters that are sometimes green-blue, and often crystal clear. All hotels in Nusa Dua share a walking path that runs along the beach, and one can quickly hop between hotels to sample the best of restaurants around. Bali also has amongst the widest range of fruits I have seen in any country (baring the Philippines, of course). 

We had got an international drivers permit to drive around the island, and on the very first day managed to hire a car. In retrospect, it was one of the best moves we ever made. Petrol on the island is cheap, the roads are well laid, and traffic is relatively coherent and sparse (relative to India, of course. Westerners have a different notion altogether). In addition, cars are a right-hand drive, quite like India.

Further North of the airport is the big backpacker hangout of Kuta, a bustling market-place that is very alike Kathmandu's Thamel or Bangkok's Khao San. Shops sell items from every part of the planet and the mulling backpacker crowd seems to talk every language out there. North of Kuta is the upmarket Seminyak, with its bevy of luxury hotels (including the Oberoi and the Anantara), where apparently the who's-who of the world stay when they come visiting.

Ulun Batur Temple

The city of Denpasar reminded us of the towns of Kerala, with sloping ornate roofs, criss-cross roads, and its smattering of gardens. The Bali Museum situated in town is small, but a worthy visit to understand Balinese culture in greater detail.

After a couple of days in Nusa Dua, we moved to Ubud, made famous in "Eat, Pray, Love". Ubud is one of the prettiest places I have been to. The culture, the markets, the verdant greenery of the rice-fields, the spas, and the bustling back-packer crowds make it an great experience for an idle walk around. An interesting part of the Ubud is the Monkey forest, where gazillions of monkeys abound. Most travellers love feeding the monkeys and playing with them, and it makes a fun watch, except when some of the simians start bounding after you!

During our stay in Ubud, we decided to take a chance and drive up to Lovina, near the northern-most tip of the island. The guy who we hired the car from, had said that the Lovina was "very very far", but we decided to take a chance, since at just under a hundred kilometers it didn't seem much. The drive took us a total of 3 hours from Ubud, and was quite memorable cutting across the Kintamani mountains with their verdant chill, and giving us a chance to visit the famous lake temple of Ulun Danu Batur. Interestingly, outside the temple of Ulun Batur was a painter, one of whose paintings was of Shah Rukh Khan !

The weather in Lovina was balmy and a bit sultry - reminding me of Mumbai. The beach, however, was nothing special - covered with stones and quite a bit of dirt - similar to the Chowpatty. As we walked along the beach, a couple of fishermen sitting nearby turned around, and noticing we were Indians, started singing "Kuch kuch hota hai" (!) with a Balinese twinge, making it a memorable visit. 

Another memorable trip was a visit to the temple of Ulu Watu, with its famous Hanuman Kecak and Fire Dance, depicting Hanuman's visit to Lanka and the burning of the tail & island. The actor playing 'Hanuman' was funny, jumping around all over the arena and in-between the audiences, and the crescendo rendition of the 'chak-chak'-ing monkey actors created an intensely theatrical, emotional feel.

Ulu Watu Hanuman Kecak Dance

For Indians visiting Bali: Given the cultural similarity, Indians will associate well with the shared culture and legends (the Ramayana is widely popular, and so is Shah Rukh Khan ;-D). Vegetarian food is available widely. In addition, there is much to learn from the way Balinese people have inter-vowen and maintained their traditional culture in every part of their lifestyle - from the architecture, their music, to their daily food.

(For the record, we visited Bali late last year. I have finally managed to complete this post, after having sat down to write multiple times in parts)

A premium for hassle-free outsourcing?

The biggest pain in outsourcing is the hassle that one has to go through to manage a service provider - the hassle of managing the quality and levels of service, while having let go of control over processes. Service providers should learn to manage themselves, and I would bet that any experienced buyer will pay a premium for a hassle-free outsourcing service.

In my previous avatar, I was a management consultant who spent quite a bit of time advising companies on outsourcing, and advising service providers on delivering quality outsourcing services. Now, when I am a buyer of outsourcing services myself, albeit in a smaller vein, I have begun to realize the pain that buyers go through in the outsourcing process.

There is nothing more painful than to see the service provider perform poorly after having let go of control over your process and trusted a third party to deliver it for you. What makes it extremely painful in an outsourcing setup is the relative lack of visibility and control in managing performance vis-a-vis an internal setup. 

It is much easier to identify and establish corrective measures early when its an internal team: given your visibility it is much easier to identify poor performers or points of poor performance and institute corrective actions in-time: motivations, incentives, training, change, whatever.

If an external team performs poorly, you will only realize that issue post-facto and with significant amount of delay. Yes, everyone talks about fine-grained service levels and governance meetings to manage, but unless you are reviewing at a minutae level on a daily basis, there is limited chance that you will identify points of failure early. 

What's even worse is that it is possible for managers from the external party to not report poor performance (as one will realize, not everything can be measured or monitored impartially). Plus close review is against the fundamental tenet of outsourcing, which postulates a hands-off behavior to the extent possible. 

So when poor performance occurs, tracing that poor performance and resolving it is an incredible hassle.

Now the reality in any process management is that there will always be points of poor performance. Success lies in identifying and resolving those performance challenges early. Outsourcing makes it a hassle, and that is why it is such a pain.

I always used to wonder why most vendor managers in outsourcing relationships crib about their service providers. Now I know. I'd pay a premium for a service provider who would give me no hassle. Someone who could manage himself, and give me a pain-less outsourcing experience.

These are my hands-on learnings:

1. Be super diligent while identifying service providers. If one expends X effort in identifying and getting on-board employees, plan to expend 2-3X+ effort in identifying a quality vendor. Most people focus on capabilities and price, but attitudes, mindset, and work ethic make a much bigger difference. And reference checks make a world of a difference. (think of it as hiring taken to the next level). 

2. Manage closely, particularly at the start of a relationship. Do not let go early in a relationship. Spend time establishing behaviors and correctly setting expectations on performance like the vendor is your internal team. It is one thing to put things down on paper or on a contract, but it is quite another to institute those in people. 

3. Incentize. Incentivize positive and negative behaviors clearly. Have bonuses and penalties. It is easy to believe that everything will work well based on loose notions of mutual trust, but believe me, that it does not work in an outsourced setup as well as in an internal team. It is much easier to manage performance and attitudes if incentives are set well.

Before I close, let me say though that I am, and have always been, a big fan of outsourcing. I have always believed that one should focus on the core and outsource everything else. But hassle-free experiences are essential for outsourcing to succeed. 

The Kolams of Bangalore

Kolams of Bangalore

Do you teach the bright, or the slow?

One of the things I have been doing recently, now that I am supposedly the master of my own time, is teaching. Besides keeping me on my toes, the sense of personal fulfillment with teaching is quite distinctive. It is another matter that teaching has made me realize how little we actually use all the stuff that we were taught in school and college life, but that's another post.

Every class has a range of students. Some who learn fast and outdo everyone in their comprehension of a subject, some who are slow and take time to understand a subject, and a vast majority who fall around the means.

As a teacher, a big challenge is to figure which set of students should one focus on during class.

It is often easy to address the fast and the brightest, since they are the easiest to teach to. They get what you say and often tend to challenge you to push yourself. Often they are also the most participate and vocal.

However if you do so, it is pretty easy to leave behind the vast majority who would have understood very little of what you would have taught in class. Particularly the slow learners.

When I started teaching a long time back as a teaching assistant in college, this was a mistake I did - focusing on the fast. The classes would be exhilarating personally since I would focus on solving tough problems and debating with the fast learners in class. Yet after a couple of classes, I would realize that a majority of the class still did not grasp the concepts taught a few classes back. Worse still is the phenomenon that most students hesitate to ask questions when not understanding a topic, and after a couple of classes with incomprehension tend to lose interest in the subject. As a result one has created a whole class of slow learners by not getting the class along early. It took me a while to realize the folly of this approach.

Take the contrary approach of focusing on the slow learners. The challenge here is that by slowing down and working with the slow learners, it is possible to get a large part of class bored. Or so one would think.

Interestingly, even the brightest students often have weak spots. There are classes where even the brightest tend to be slow in comprehension, and even parts of a certain class could register slow. Therefore, slowing down tends to take along the whole class much better.

Add to this the reality that the fastest invariably know how to self learn a subject with minimal tutorial help. As teachers, we add greater value to the class by getting the slow learners and the vast majority to get alongside the fast in their grasp of the subject.

This is my experience. What do you think? Do you teach the bright, or the slow?

Out in the open

Mumbai is one of the few cities that manages to shock and awe every time one visits. Even if one has lived here and visited frequently, it is quite an experience to get back. What is sad though is the extent to which stark poverty can be observed so close by and so out in the open. 

From the slum roofs which are inescapable as one lands in this city to the shanties that intermingle with tall skyscrapers, Mumbai is a city of contrasts. At night, one sees an innumerable number of people who sleep out on footpaths or roads, right next to the cars whizzing by. In day, it is sad to see individuals performing their daily ablutions right in public view while living in houses the size of a mid-size cot.

Why doesn't it galvanize us better off citizens to change the situation? Is it because when one lives amidst such disparity we get so benumbed by seeing it daily that it does not sting? Or is it because we think there is no apparent solution to it? Or is it because we believe it is a problem for somebody else to solve? When we can manage to send rockets to outer-space, why can we not develop the initiative to resolve this disparity.